EU Commission urges Poland to provide evidence Turów mine has been shut down

At a press conference in Brussels on Tuesda, the EU Commission Spokesperson for Climate Action and Energy Tim McPhie urged Poland to urgently provide evidence it had stopped extracting lignite from the open-pit mine in Turów, in line with a ruling passed by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

McPhie added that if Poland does not prove it stopped mining in Turów, the EU Commission would start to issue payment demands on a regular basis.

Asked about Poland's response to EU Commission's call, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the country was unlikely to change its decision, as closing down Turów would translate into shutting down 4-7% of Poland's electric energy grid.

In his view, it would be difficult for Poland to deprive tens of thousands of citizens of heat, thousands of employees of their jobs, and leave millions of Polish homes without electricity.

The prime minister said he would not agree to such solution, dismissing it as unacceptable from the social, energy and economic point of view.

He also stressed the winter was coming. "I ask the Court of Justice in Luxembourg: do you want people to freeze during the winter, and leave them without electricity in those winter months? As the prime minister, I cannot allow something like this to happen," Morawiecki concluded.

A Polish official said on Monday Poland and the Czech Republic could resume talks in "the next few days" on a dispute over a lignite mine, the most serious spat between the two countries in decades. The European Union's top court told Poland last month to halt operations at the Turow open-pit lignite mine and power plant on the border with the Czech Republic after Prague complained of environmental damage in nearby Czech villages. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) then ordered Poland to pay a daily penalty of 500,000 euros ($581,900) to the European Commission after it failed to halt operations. Talks on the dispute were suspended at the start of this month before a Czech parliamentary election, with the main sticking point being the length of the agreement, according to Czech authorities. "I think it is a matter of the next few days, at most two weeks, when the talks will be resumed," Deputy foreign minister Piotr Wawrzyk told private broadcaster RMF FM. The Polish government says the mine and nearby power plant, both operated by energy company PGE (PGE.WA), are crucial for energy security, with the plant responsible for as much as 7% of Poland's energy output.